This thesis is concerned with UK sampling practice, and therefore ideas around creativity and creative practice are examined with a view to finding a holistic way in which this and other forms of musical creativity may be investigated. ‘Common-sense’ Romantic myths have and continue to inform both popular and academic discussions of creativity, and the thesis begins by challenging ideas such as the muse and genius and arguing for understanding both the development and practice of creativity in terms of a complex system of collaboration and interaction with particular reference to the work of Bourdieu (1990, 1991, 1993, 1996) on cultural production and Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1996, 1999a) on the systems approach to creativity, not least because sample based music, by its very nature, is the product of multiple authors. Discussion then turns to consideration of how sampling composers developed creative practice, and locates the thesis interviewees within the historical period discussed. This history is important because while academic and popular literature has discussed the growth and development of dance music in the period explored here, no history exists particular to the development of sampling in UK dance music, and the history is considered in terms of the affordances and constraints offered by technology and social change, while the legal application and industrial management of copyright is evaluated in terms of how it has both limited some forms of sampling practice developed over the period, and enabled new forms of practice, based around a sampling aesthetic, to emerge. Finally, a conceptual toolbox is proposed, comprising the use of the particular kind of case study represented by this thesis, and the application of theories on creativity and semiotics, as a way of examining musical creativity and other forms of artistic practice.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)